, The Associated Press 2003-06-30
In a ruling testing the bounds of free speech in cyberspace, California's highest court ruled Monday that a fired Intel Corp. employee did not trespass on the company's e-mail servers when he inundated its employees with electronic complaints.
A lower court had considered Hamidi to be trespassing on the Santa Clara-based chipmaker's servers, just as if somebody were squatting on a piece of physical private property. Intel argued that the messages were spam and intruded on its property.
The case attracted widespread interest among civil libertarians and the technology community as it touched on thorny issues of behavior in a digital world where one's actions can affect others remotely.
The majority on the sharply divided court found that not only was Hamidi not guilty of trespassing by sending messages to Intel e-mail lists, but that the lower-court injunction barring him from the activity was violating his First Amendment rights.
"He no more invaded Intel's property than does a protester holding a sign or shouting through a bullhorn outside corporate headquarters, posting a letter through the mail, or telephoning to complain of a corporate practice," wrote Justice Kathryn Werdegar in the majority opinion.
The majority's reasoning does not give a legal nod to those sending spam, or unsolicited e-mail, en masse, Werdegar noted.
She also noted that Intel's servers were not harmed and that the thousands of Hamidi e-mail recipients were able to request that the e-mails stop, which Hamidi honored. Had that not been the case, perhaps Hamidi would be trespassing, she said.
She added that Intel's chief concern was the content of his disparaging e-mails, which are protected speech. Commercial speech, like spam, does not have the same First Amendment protection.
Hamidi, a 56-year-old former Intel engineer, was fired in 1995 after a work-injury dispute, and began sending e-mails complaining of unfair work practices to as many as 30,000 Intel employees at a time.
The chipmaker asked him to stop, then sued and won a court order barring him from sending the e-mail missives. Intel alleged that he was in effect trespassing on private property. The appeals court agreed, ruling that Intel had the same right to police its e-mail system as it would its factories and offices.
Hamidi, who now works for the state's Franchise Tax Board, vowed Monday to resume his e-mails. "I'm going to do it to the max," he said.
Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said the company was disappointed and assessing its "options in the event Mr. Hamidi resumes his spamming activity against Intel."
Writing for the three-justice minority, Justice Janice Rogers Brown said "Intel should not be helpless in the face of repeated and threatened abuse and contamination of its private computer system."
San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and dozens of law professors urged the court to overturn Hamidi's injunction.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association and Information Technology Industry Council and others asked the court to side with Intel.
Werdegar made it clear that the majority was not inviting spam. Internet service providers, she wrote, could sue for trespassing "upon evidence that the vast quantities of mail sent by spammers both overburdened the ISP's own computers and made the entire computer system harder to use for recipients, including ISP customers."
Two weeks ago, Microsoft Corp. filed 15 such suits.
